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Monday, August 1, 2016

Get Ready to Vote for U.S. Senate (Republican Primary)

Four Republicans qualified for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Marco Rubio, who in the final days decided to run for re-election. Rubio’s challengers are Carlos Beruff, Ernie Rivera and Dwight Mark Anthony Young.

In this post, I’ll first take a look at the money, then tell you a bit about the candidates and share the strategy I used to decide who I will vote for.

Rivera does not have a chance against Beruff and Rubio, given his limited funding through March 31. He didn’t file the second quarter report that was due July 15.

Young filed his Statement of Candidacy on July 5; no other information about his campaign finances is available on the federal website

Beruff seems to plan to buy his way into the Senate. Having seen his TV ads, I was surprised to realize that he had spent $4.4 million, including over $4 million of his own money, through June 30 … and who knows how much more since then? How much does it cost to buy a Senate seat? His ads these days tie him to Trump and Scott. Will that do it?

Rubio’s money is interesting. Individual contributions through June 30 totalled $1.7 million; he also had Party Committee contributions of $46,800 and Other Committee contributions of $450,100. No loans to his own campaign. And through June 30, only $173,870 of expenditures. Time will tell what he does with the money.

With that look at the money, let’s turn to the candidates.

Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio is Florida’s junior U.S. Senator. He is 45 years old, born in Miami in 1971 of Cuban immigrants. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida (1993) and a law degree from the University of Miami (1996). Two years after law school, he entered politics as Commissioner - City of West Miami, where he served for two years before running successfully for the Florida House of Representatives. There, he served the maximum eight years, the final two as Speaker. Bypassing the Florida Senate, he then ran for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Mel Martinez (R) in 2009. Rubio won in a three-way race with 48.89 percent of the vote, beating challengers Charlie Crist (Independent - 29.71 percent) and Kendrick Meek (Democrat - 20.20 percent of the vote).

Carlos Beruff is a Florida real estate developer who founded Medallion Home in Bradenton, FL, in 1994. Born in 1958, he is 58 years old. Like Rubio, he was born in Miami to Cuban immigrants. He attended Stetson University, then the University of South Florida, but did not earn a degree.

ABC7 said he is “one of the wealthiest developers in Southwest Florida” whose political influence was “fueled by campaign contributions to then Florida Governor Charlie Crist.” He has never held elective office, but served as a 2008 Crist appointee on the boards of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, the State College of Florida and the Manatee-Sarasota Airport Authority, which overseas the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport. He supported Crist in the 2010 Senate election, but then “shifted his allegiance to Governor Rick Scott, who appointed him to his health panel and reappointed him to positions already held.”

A Google search on Carlos Beruff reveals self-professed business mistakes and a $235,000 tax avoidance scheme that Democratic Senator Bill Nelson also benefited from on a lesser scale (see here). In 2010, Medallion Homes was accused of building homes with contaminated Chinese drywall.

2nd Amendment (“our founding fathers gave all Americans the right to bear arms”);

Immigration (“a country without borders is not a country at all”):

Foreign Policy (“America’s standing in the world has been unconscionably diminished”);

National Security and Terrorism (“the threats to our national security are growing by the day”);

Veterans (… “they have given us everything”);

Education (“I’ll fight to end Common Core”);

Cuba (“President Obama’s Cuba policy is personally offensive to me”):

Spending & the National Debt (“I’ve built a business so I know … about living within your means”);

Protecting Our Seniors (“I will never support anything that would hurt current retirees”).

Beruff was the only major Republican candidate to remain in the Senate race after Rubio reversed previous statements and decided to run. He uses his support for Trump in attack ads against Rubio. (See here.)

Dwight Mark Anthony Youngis a Detention Deputy working for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. He is 50 years old and has a B.A in Political Science from Queens College New York.

In a “Meet the Candidate” piece, Young said, “I have decided to run for the US Senate because of what I see as the political betrayal of our Political leaders in regards to the Constitution of America. I see it as my civic duty to do something about this problem.”

I could find no campaign website or Facebook Page and very little about Young online.

My Strategy

My strategy is to vote for the candidate most likely to lose to the Democratic challenger in November.

A Quinnipiac University poll taken June 30 - July 11 had Rubio beating Murphy by 13 points and beating Grayson by 12 points. Quinnipiac writes, "The breadth of Sen. Rubio’s lead against Rep. Patrick Murphy, who has the backing of the Democratic leadership, is impressive. He has a 19-point margin among independent voters and scores 10 points better among Republicans than Murphy does among Democrats.” The same poll shows Murphy beating Beruff 40/34, and a Beruff/Grayson race tied at 38/38.